Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder around 2011, her parents told Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigators in a June 12, 2023 interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the investigation.
The Star previously reported that police documents revealed Audrey Hale to be a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and The Star reported on Sunday that Hale’s parents, Ronald and Norma Hale, first learned of their daughter’s purported autism diagnosis from a speech pathologist in the summer of 2001.
According to the transcript, Norma Hale told police that Audrey Hale required psychological and medical help for anxiety in approximately 2010, when Audrey Hale was an 10th grade student at the Nashville School of the Arts.
“When she got to 10th grade, she had more difficulty and that’s when she was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, which she really had had in middle school,” Norma Hale told MNPD. She explained that her daughter “was good at hiding a lot of things, obviously, but she started to have extreme anxiety.”
Norma Hale told police her daughter “ran away out of the school” on more than one occasion, “so then we had her tested again” to obtain both “psychiatric help” and “medication help.”
The anxiety disorder was apparently so serious that Norma Hale, in retrospect, said her daughter needed medications.
“I didn’t realize it in middle school, that she had so much anxiety about playing and performing and she really needed medication,” Norma Hale told police.
Reviewing both police documents and MNPD photographs from the Hale family home, The Star reported last month that Audrey Hale was prescribed at least five medications, including three anti-anxiety drugs, a nasal spray, and an antidepressant.
Specifically, prescription bottles were recovered for the anti-anxiety medications Lorazepam, Buspirone, and Hydroxyzine, as well as the generic version of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Lexapro.
Norma and Ronald Hale explained to investigators that Audrey Hale received accommodations at school as a result of the diagnosis.
“So Audrey speaking in front of people was extremely stressful,” explained Norma Hale. “So they gave an accommodation so that she didn’t have to do that.”
During this time, according to Norma Hale, her daughter continued to struggle with an “auditory processing disorder.”
“So Audrey took much longer to complete things,” Norma Hale explained.
Police documents show Audrey Hale continued to receive mental health treatments until she was heroically shot by police as she attacked the Covenant School on March 27, 2023, when she claimed the lives of three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members.
Both Star News Digital Media Inc., which owns and operates The Star, and editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuits which seek to compel both the MNPD and the FBI to release Hale’s full writings, including those sometimes called a manifesto.
Last month, The Star published a May 2023 memo from the FBI to MNPD Chief John Drake which “strongly” advised against releasing “legacy tokens” from killers like Hale. An FBI definition suggests both the approximately 80 pages of Hale’s writings obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits are considered unfit for public release by the federal agency.
The FBI declined to confirm it sent the memo in a statement to The Star, but acknowledged it sends such “products” to local law enforcement.
Since obtaining Hale’s writings and a tranche of police documents, The Star has published more than 60 articles that include the killer’s own words or provide new details about the Covenant investigation.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
